Alamo Colleges wins national award for workforce program

Alamo Colleges has won a national Bellwether Award for its Alamo Academies, a program that trains high school students for high-demand science and technology careers.

The Bellwether Awards go to innovative, replicable community college programs. Alamo Colleges won in the workforce development category, beating out nine other finalists including its own I-BEST program.

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The awards were announced Tuesday at the annual Community College Futures Assembly in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

“In more than 1,200 national community colleges, the Bellwether Award is one of the highest honors an institution can receive,” said Dale F. Campbell, director of the policy summit, in a prepared statement. “The awards are similar to being selected by your peers for the Oscar or Emmy awards.”

The Alamo Academies pull high school juniors and seniors from the San Antonio, Northside, Southside, Harlandale, East Central and Edgewood independent school districts into free community college courses in technological fields. Over two years, students earn college credits that put them halfway toward Associate of Applied Science degrees.

In between their junior and senior years, they work in paid internships with companies including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Toyota and HOLT CAT Machines & Engines.

The participating school districts serve many of the lowest-income areas in Bexar County, so Alamo Academies serve a student population that is 75 percent minority and 86 percent economically disadvantaged.

After graduating high school, most Alamo Academies alumni continue their college education at Alamo Colleges or four-year institutions, said Gene Bowman, the program’s executive director.

Many enter the workforce directly at an average starting salary exceeding $42,000, and their employers often pay for them to finish their degrees, said Alamo Colleges Chancellor Bruce Leslie. Lockheed Martin and Toyota depend heavily on the program for new hires in San Antonio, he said.

“This is a wonderful example of how employer direct involvement can have a very positive effect on meeting the workforce needs that we have,” Leslie said.

Academies have been created in aerospace, manufacturing, information technology, health and heavy equipment. This year, 200 students are benefiting from the program, Bowman said.

Federico Zaragoza, now vice chancellor of economic and workforce development at Alamo Colleges, and Joe Wilson, a Lockheed Martin representative, started the program 13 years ago in a partnership with the city of San Antonio, using money that the community college district would otherwise have paid as an energy tax, Leslie said.

The Alamo Academies model is being replicated in Austin, Fort Worth, Montreal and Medellin, Colombia.